Discover the Queen of Welsh resorts

The elegant seaside town of Llandudno in North Wales and the spectacularly diverse and sprawling valleys of South Wales have been chosen by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) as an ideal place for summer visitors.

The areas feature as part of a project and website – Discovering Britain – which aims to explain the stories behind the UK’s built and natural landscapes through a series of self-led geographical walks.

In the North, walkers will find all the essential elements of a traditional British resort - pier, promenade and Punch and Judy – but also be able to discover why the marshland behind Llandudno Bay was chosen for a new seaside town, and how it was carefully planned with a grid system.

The walk starts at a typical Victorian attraction, the camera obscura built in 1859, which gives panoramic views across the town and bay. It continues along the curved seafront with its elegant hotels, the broad avenues behind and through the well-tended gardens.

The walk recreates a journey done by Emily Roberts, who walked from Ferndale in the Rhondda Fachvalley over to Penrhiwceiber in the Cynon Valley in the years 1910 to 1914.

In the South, walkers will discover how coalmining transformed rural valleys into an industrial landscape of collieries and waste tips, while houses were built up the valley sides in long terraces. They will learn how miners and their families would escape from the noise and pollution of the valley bottoms to the countryside above and between the Valleys.